In an utterly disrespectful display of vicious political point scoring, bloggers and commentators have jumped on yesterday’s tragic shooting at the Holocaust museum in Washington DC, insinuating that it justifies the Department of Homeland Security’s recent classification of gun owners and veterans as dangerous right wing extremists.

“Did that controversial Homeland Security report on right-wing extremists get it right?” O’Keefe asks, referring to the recently leaked Homeland Security intelligence assessment[3] that characterized millions of American citizens as potentially violent terrorists who are a threat to law enforcement.

All the usual politicized groups that masquerade as “civil rights” organisations, while at the same time lobbying for the complete elimination of liberties have pounced on the incident[4] in their droves.

“I think this latest round of killing once again shows how ridiculous the criticism from the right of the Department of Homeland Security report was. That whole brouhaha was absurd,” said Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, the group cited as a research source in the recent MIAC report, which characterized Ron Paul supporters as extremists.

“We felt the DHS report was pretty right on,” said Deborah Lauter of the Anti-Defamation League. “Clearly the election of Obama, the current financial crisis, and the discussion of immigration reform –those things have certainly fueled the right wing extremist movement in this country….There are clear indications that the rhetoric is manifesting. We hope it’s not the tip of the iceberg.”

The fact that the 88-year-old shooter, James von Brunn, was a retired veteran has provided ample ammunition for those seeking to justify the broad demonization contained within the DHS report.

To the surprise of some left wing bloggers, but not to anyone who understands the bait and switch tactics routinely utilized by Fox News, host Shepard Smith[5] was one of the first commentators to make the connection between the shooting and the DHS report.

“This is a former military guy, and he’s gone extremist,” Smith said firmly, shaking his head. “They were warning us for a reason. They see signs that this sort of thing is bubbling up.”

“There was something to it,” concluded Smith. “It was not obscene … and it appears now that they were right.”

Other undignified bloggers have also seized on the shooting in a childish attempt to justify their pathetically entrenched political viewpoints.

“I hope that everyone who mau-maued the Department of Homeland Security for expressing concern about this kind of thing feels appropriately ashamed of themselves,” Matthew Yglesias of Think Progress[6] wrote.

“The Republican hysteria over the DHS report — which was, by the way, initiated by a Bush administration official — was always based more on a partisan scheme than reality, but the incessant complaints look especially misguided today,” writes Washington Monthly[7]‘s Steve Benen.

Brian Beutler of Talking Points Memo[8] published a list of reasons why the DHS report was correct.

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The fact remains that it is patently stupid and completely irresponsible to suggest that all veterans, supporters of the second amendment, Americans with economic concerns and those concerned with the loss of U.S. sovereignty are extremist racist killers. And that is what the leaked DHS report insinuated.

The very moment the report hit the mainstream, those on the right, such as Glenn Beck and Michael Weiner Savage, derided it as some kind of massive left wing Marxist Obama administration plot.

Of course, they uniformly failed to point out that the document was created by the Bush administration and that an earlier report produced by the Strategic Analysis Group, Homeland Environment and Threat Analysis Division of the DHS concentrated on “left wing extremism” ( Leftwing Extremists Likely to Increase Use of Cyber Attacks over the Coming Decade[10]), again demonstrating the federal government does not hold an ideological bias when it comes demonizing groups and individuals that are opposed to it.

Now, in the wake of another shooting incident, those on the left have wasted no time in using the incident to hit back at the equally misguided fools on the right.

In reality these weak minded hacks have simply allowed themselves to be goaded into defending and agreeing with the ludicrous DHS security assessment.

This flurry of inane activity highlights how useful a tool the false left/right political paradigm is. The left and the right are so obsessed with bickering and winning pointless moral victories over each other that the absolute destruction of everything America stands for becomes a secondary concern.

Highlighting how completely isolated from reality they are, those attempting to exploit this awful tragedy to score political points, whether it be from the right or the left, is so far beyond contemptible, it defies belief.

Meanwhile, the corporate and financial elite are happy to play both sides off against each other while they carry on, almost completely undeterred, with their freedom destroying Social Darwinist agenda.